Behind the Brand: When Planning Meets Real Life

When Planning Isn’t Enough

When you’re a planner—through and through—and life doesn’t allow the planning, it can feel incredibly unsettling.

That’s been happening more and more for us this past year. It’s taken a lot of digging deep, choosing to keep going, and trying not to let it shake us too much. I keep telling myself that if I plan for consistency as much as possible, then maybe—just maybe—the seasons of inconsistency will feel a little more manageable.

I’m not fully convinced.

Some days, I still want to throw up my hands and say, “embrace the suck.”
If you’ve never heard that phrase, it’s straight from the Army—and honestly, there’s some truth to it. Sometimes the only option is to grit your teeth and take on the hard, even when you’d rather do literally anything else.

And sometimes, the planning and rearranging isn’t even for anything big or exciting—it’s for house chores.

When my husband and I are both gone the same weekend for Guard drill, it throws a major wrench into whatever house projects were saved for the weekend. You start Monday already feeling behind, like you’re playing catch-up before the week has even really started.

When it’s my husband’s busy season—or when he ends up working unexpectedly—it throws even more wrenches into our family plans. I’ve learned to assume we can’t really plan to do much together as a family unless it’s a major holiday, it’s downpouring rain, or there’s a full-blown blizzard.

So I try to plan for and accomplish most of the house things myself. Sometimes that means taking a vacation day while the kids are at school and daycare just to mow our massive yard and catch up on housework—because we all know how impossible that is to truly accomplish with three little ones underfoot.

And while all of that may sound small or mundane—missed chores, rearranged schedules, housework that spills into another week—it’s rarely just about the chores. Those little disruptions have a way of spilling into the moments that matter most.

Like this year, we didn’t go trick-or-treating.

We stopped at one indoor event an organization had going on in town, simply because we had to shift gears. Our youngest had an ear infection, and my husband had to get to Guard drill—yes, the organization that says family first. That meant I couldn’t take a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old out into the wind and cold with an 8-month-old whose ears were hurting.

You can imagine how thrilled our 6-year-old was.

And we get it—military life loves to throw curveballs. We’ve done a pretty good job preparing our kids for that reality (as much as you can at their ages). But what’s hard—really hard—is when people, whether it’s the military, a civilian job, or even friends or family, have no respect or regard for your family or your planning.

And in all honesty, I think a lot of that comes from the fact that most people don’t truly see how much my husband works or how often I’m doing mornings, suppers, and bedtimes alone—for the better part of the year, alone. I don’t usually say much about it, so it goes unknown and unnoticed.

Not out of malice—just out of not knowing.

I bite my tongue often when others talk or joke about being a “single parent” because their spouse works a lot. You won’t hear me say that. Yes, I am the default parent, and yes, I am often a solo parent—but I am not a single parent. I couldn’t do this without my husband.

Everyone is busy. Everyone has things going on. And whether you’re a planner or not, being considerate of other people’s time, energy, and families matters.

So here’s where I’m landing lately:
Plan how you can. Be willing to adjust. Give yourself permission to make changes. But also—give yourself permission to say no when you can.

You’ll thank yourself later. 🌻

Simply Samantha 🌻
Simply Real. Simply Me.